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I very nearly beat No Man’s Sky last night, except for one stupid thing I did 20+ hours ago.

Let me back up for a sec, though. Firstly, don’t necessarily take my completion time as an average: I was specifically on the Atlas questline, which supposedly gets you to the center much more quickly than the regular way; secondly, I did finally upgrade my warp drive, which makes a huge difference when it comes to warping – I was jumping 4-5 star systems at a time, rather than just 1. And honestly, at this point, I kinda just want to wrap things up and see what happens; there’s not enough meat here to keep me satiated, and meanwhile there’s still that Witcher 3: Blood & Wine DLC I keep meaning to finish.

So, then: if you were to look at any NMS guides right now, one of the first things they’ll tell you is don’t sell your Atlas Stones, no matter what – doesn’t matter if you need the inventory space OR the copious amounts of money. As you might imagine, then, my particular problem is that when I started playing the game, this wasn’t common knowledge. I needed money and saw that a Stone was selling for something absolutely absurd on the Galactic Trade market, and so I went for it.

You need 10 Atlas Stones to get the Atlas ending; I currently have 9.

I’m in a bit of a dilemma, in other words. I don’t want to start over from scratch. I’m not particularly interested in farming 2M units’ worth of materials in order to buy a Stone off the market – and I don’t even know if my current star system’s market is even selling them. And I’m very reluctant to leave this system until I can resolve this situation, as I’m not sure if I’ll run into any more Atlas Waypoints – and I foolishly forgot to rename the system so that I could easily find it again if I got too far ahead.

So the way I see it, I’ve got two viable choices. I can either use that item-duping glitch and get myself the 10th stone as soon as possible (i.e., before they patch it out), or… I sell all 9 stones and buy myself the sweetest ship I can find, and continue on my merry way through the galaxy… doing the exact same shit I’ve already been doing since I started. I’m not necessarily in favor of using glitches and exploits, but in this specific case I can’t help but feel like it’s the right answer, since I didn’t know I was supposed to hold on to them when I first got one. And, well… I’m starting to get a little bored. I don’t really know what else there is for me to do beyond getting all my “Journey Milestones” up to level 10 – and as it currently stands, I’m mostly there on that score anyway.

I should also admit that I looked at the 10 Atlas Stones ending on YouTube – just because I needed to know if it was worth it. I’m not going to spoil it here, but I will say this: if the ending I saw is indeed the real ending (since it might’ve been filmed pre-Day One Patch), then HOLY SHIT what a colossally stupid waste of time this has been.

I don’t mean to sound so angry. The game’s ambition is staggering to behold and I certainly don’t regret my purchase, even if I’m ultimately disappointed in my experience – the lethal combination of infinite monotony and incessant crashing would do that to anyone. And I can certainly see Hello Games patching in a whole mess of interesting content down the line, and I’d be legitimately curious to see what they have to offer. I’d love to see some hand-crafted planets with some new questlines; or, at least, some new variations in the planet-forming algorithms. The game doesn’t take up that much space on my PS4, anyway, so it’s not like I’m going to delete it.